The sixth beta of FreeBSD 5.3 is now available for download and testing: "The FreeBSD Release Engineering Team is proud to announce the availability of FreeBSD 5.3-BETA6. This is the sixth BETA of the 5.3 release cycle. Fixes and Enhancements made since BETA5: many USB device updates; fix a panic when unloading the if_tap module; fix a lock order reversal in the network ioctl code; fix a panic with PF; fix large UID and GID handling in libarchive; the PFIL_HOOKS kernel option is now silently enabled by default; various locking fixes to the network stack; the net.inet.ip.check_interface sysctl is off by default now...." Read the rest of the release announcement. Download (i386): 5.3-BETA6-i386-disc1.iso (644MB) and 5.3-BETA6-i386-disc2.iso (603MB).

FreeBSD is a UNIX-like operating system for the i386, amd64, IA-64, arm, MIPS, powerpc, ppc64, PC-98 and UltraSPARC platforms based on U.C. Berkeley's "4.4BSD-Lite" release, with some "4.4BSD-Lite2" enhancements. It is also based indirectly on William Jolitz's port of U.C. Berkeley's "Net/2" to the i386, known as "386BSD", though very little of the 386BSD code remains. FreeBSD is used by companies, Internet Service Providers, researchers, computer professionals, students and home users all over the world in their work, education and recreation. FreeBSD comes with over 20,000 packages (pre-compiled software that is bundled for easy installation), covering a wide range of areas: from server software, databases and web servers, to desktop software, games, web browsers and business software - all free and easy to install.

Glen Barber has announced the availability of a test release for FreeBSD 10.2. The new release candidate, version 10.2-RC2, offers users a number of improvements to UEFI support, laptop suspend/resume and driver updates. Security updates discovered since the previous release candidate have been patched and more work has been done on the 10.2 release notes, which are a work in progress. Work has also been done to make the live images for ARM devices more accessible: "For convenience for those without console access to supported ARM devices, a default 'freebsd' user exists for ssh login. The password is 'freebsd', which it is strongly recommended to change after gaining access to the system. Additionally, the 'root' user password is 'root', which is also recommended to change." More information, along with upgrade instructions for people running previous releases of FreeBSD, can be found in the project's release announcement. Download: FreeBSD-10.2-RC2-amd64-dvd1.iso (2,612MB, SHA256), FreeBSD-10.2-RC2-i386-dvd1.iso (2,428MB, SHA256).

Glen Barber has announced that the first release candidate for the upcoming FreeBSD 10.2 is now ready for testing: "The first RC build of the 10.2-RELEASE release cycle is now available. Changes Since 10.2-BETA2: tcpdump(8) has been updated to obtain capsicum(4) rights for dump file rotation; the ixgbe(4) driver has been updated to fix setting sysctl(8) tunable entries in loader.conf(5); the ZFS txg_quiesce() function has been updated to use __noinline(), allowing DTrace monitoring for txg_quiesce() calls; bsdinstall(8) has been updated to align partitions on 1MB boundaries when ZFS is the selected filesystem, as well as a number of other changes, including detecting BIOS versions to determine when the 'active' flag should be set on the boot partition; the quota(1) utility has been updated to support IPv6; the xen(4) netfront interface has been updated to preserve configurations across virtual machine migrations...." Continue to the release announcement to find out more. Download: FreeBSD-10.2-RC1-amd64-dvd1.iso (2,615MB, SHA256), FreeBSD-10.2-RC1-i386-dvd1.iso (2,432MB, SHA256).

Less than a week after the release of the initial beta, Glen Barber has announced the availability of FreeBSD 10.2-BETA2: "The first BETA build of the 10.2-RELEASE release cycle is now available. Changes Since 10.2-BETA1: the missing GEOM_LABEL in the GUMSTIX and PANDABOARD kernel configuration files that prevented the '/dev/ufs/rootfs' fstab(5) entry to mount the root filesystem has been fixed; correctly handle rare events of transient write errors to the cylinder group blocks; an incorrect implementation of kvasprintf() in the Linux compatibility and emulation code has been fixed; setting the initial system clock time for systems with a CMOS clock set before the year 2000 has been fixed; the pw(8) utility has been updated to allow creating users with UID 0, in addition to other miscellaneous updates; the MIB names in the 'user' sysctl(3) tree have been fixed to no longer return '0' or empty values...." See the release announcement for a complete list of changes. Download: FreeBSD-10.2-BETA2-amd64-dvd1.iso (2,602MB, SHA256), FreeBSD-10.2-BETA2-i386-dvd1.iso (1,990MB, SHA256).

The FreeBSD 10.2 development cycle begins with the initial beta release: "The first BETA build of the 10.2-RELEASE release cycle is now available. Installation images are available for: amd64 GENERIC, i386 GENERIC, ia64 GENERIC, powerpc GENERIC, powerpc64 GENERIC64, sparc64 GENERIC, BEAGLEBONE, CUBOX-HUMMINGBOARD, armv6 RPI-B, armv6 WANDBOARD. If you notice problems you can report them through the Bugzilla PR system or on the -stable mailing list. If you would like to use SVN to do a source based update of an existing system, use the 'stable/10' branch. A list of changes since 10.1-RELEASE are available on the stable/10 release notes. Please note, the release notes page is not yet complete, and will be updated on an ongoing basis as the 10.2-RELEASE cycle progresses. VM disk images are available for the amd64 and i386 architectures." Here is the complete release announcement, with much more details provided in the above mentioned release notes. Quick links to download the installation DVD images for the amd64 and i386 architectures: FreeBSD-10.2-BETA1-amd64-dvd1.iso (2,565MB, SHA256), FreeBSD-10.2-BETA1-i386-dvd1.iso (1,951MB, SHA256).

FreeBSD 10.1 has been released: "The FreeBSD Release Engineering team is pleased to announce the availability of FreeBSD 10.1-RELEASE. This is the second release of the stable/10 branch, which improves on the stability of FreeBSD 10.0-RELEASE and introduces some new features. Some of the highlights: the new console driver, vt(4), has been added; support for FreeBSD/i386 guests has been added to bhyve(4); the bhyve(4) hypervisor now supports booting from a zfs(8) file system; support for SMP was added to the armv6 kernels and enabled by default in the configuration files for all platforms that contain multi-core CPUs; initial support for UEFI boot has been added for the FreeBSD/amd64 architecture...." See the release announcement and the release notes for a full list of changes. Download: FreeBSD-10.1-RELEASE-amd64-dvd1.iso (2,465MB, SHA256, pkglist), FreeBSD-10.1-RELEASE-i386-dvd1.iso (2,261MB, SHA256).

Contrary to expectation, Glen Barber today announced the availability of the fourth release candidate for FreeBSD 10.1: "The fourth RC build of the 10.1-RELEASE release cycle is now available on the FTP servers for the amd64, armv6, i386, ia64, powerpc, powerpc64 and sparc64 architectures. This is anticipated to be the final RC build of the 10.1-RELEASE cycle. Some of the changes between 10.1-RC3 and 10.1-RC4 include: fix ATA CF ERASE breakage for certain CF cards; fix a race in pmap_emulate_accessed_dirty() that could trigger a EPT misconfiguration VM-exit. Pre-installed virtual machine images for 10.1-RC4 are also available for amd64 and i386 architectures. The disk images are available in QCOW2, VHD, VMDK, and raw disk image formats. The image download size is approximately 135 MB, which decompress to a 20 GB sparse image." Read the rest of the release announcement for further information. Download: FreeBSD-10.1-RC4-amd64-dvd1.iso (2,463MB, SHA256), FreeBSD-10.1-RC4-i386-dvd1.iso (2,260MB, SHA256).

Glen Barber has announced the availability of the third and final release candidate for FreeBSD 10.1: "The third RC build of the 10.1-RELEASE release cycle is now available on the FTP servers for the amd64, armv6, i386, ia64, powerpc, powerpc64 and sparc64 architectures. Some of the changes between 10.1-RC2 and 10.1-RC3 include: several fixes to the UDPLite protocol implementation; the vt(4) driver has been updated to save and restore keyboard mode and LED states when switching windows; several fixes to the SCTP protocol implementation; a potential race condition in obtaining a file pointer has been corrected; fix ZFS ZVOL deadlock and rename issues; restore libopie.so ABI compatibility with 10.0-RELEASE; removed the last vestige of MD5 password hashes; several rc(8) script updates and fixes...." Read the release announcement for further information. Download: FreeBSD-10.1-RC3-amd64-dvd1.iso (2,467MB, SHA256), FreeBSD-10.1-RC3-i386-dvd1.iso (2,299MB, SHA256).

Glen Barber has announced the availability of the second release candidate for FreeBSD 10.1: "The second RC build of the 10.1-RELEASE release cycle is now available on the FTP servers for the amd64, armv6, i386, ia64, powerpc, powerpc64 and sparc64 architectures. Some of the changes between 10.1-RC1 and 10.1-RC2 include: fix XHCI driver for devices which have more than 15 physical root HUB ports; fix old iSCSI initiator to work with new CAM locking; fix page length reported for Block Limits VPD page; add QCOW v1 & v2 support to mkimg(1). Note to consumers of the i386 DVD installer: as result of a package build failure, the X.Org-related ports (including GNOME 2) are not available on the 10.1-RC2 i386 DVD. This will not be an issue for the 10.1-RC3 DVD, nor the 10.1-RELEASE DVD." Continue to the release announcement for more details. Download: FreeBSD-10.1-RC2-amd64-dvd1.iso (1,666MB, SHA256), FreeBSD-10.1-RC2-i386-dvd1.iso (1,068MB, SHA256).

Glen Barber has announced the availability of the first release candidate for FreeBSD 10.1 - with an important note to the users of the ZFS file system: "The first RC build of the 10.1-RELEASE release cycle is now available on the FTP servers for the amd64, armv6, i386, ia64, powerpc, powerpc64 and sparc64 architectures. Some of the changes between 10.1-BETA3 and 10.1-RC1 include: a bug that would cause all processes to appear to have the parent PID of '1' has been fixed; various updates to bsdinstall(8) and bsdconfig(8); the Hyper-V KVP (key-value pair) driver has been added, and enabled by default on amd64 and i386 architectures. Important note to ZFS users on the i386 architecture: a regression has been discovered that affects multi-disk (mirror, raidz-1, raidz-2) installations that may cause a kernel panic on boot." Read the full release announcement for further details. Download: FreeBSD-10.1-RC1-amd64-dvd1.iso (1,665MB, SHA256), FreeBSD-10.1-RC1-i386-dvd1.iso (1,507MB, SHA256).